Experts

Ken Hughes

Fast Facts

  • Bob Woodward called Hughes "one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings"
  • Has spent two decades mining the Secret White House Tapes
  • Expertise on Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Secret White House Tapes, abuses of presidential power, Watergate, Vietnam War

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • Governance
  • Leadership
  • Political Parties and Movements
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Bob Woodward has called Ken Hughes “one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings, especially those of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.” Hughes has spent two decades mining the Secret White House Tapes and unearthing their secrets. As a journalist writing in the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and Boston Globe Magazine, and, since 2000, as a researcher with the Miller Center, Hughes’s work has illuminated the uses and abuses of presidential power involved in (among other things) the origins of Watergate, Jimmy Hoffa’s release from federal prison, and the politics of the Vietnam War. 

Hughes has been interviewed by the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, PBS NewsHour, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and other news organizations. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate and Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War and the Casualties of Reelection.

Hughes is currently at work on a book about President John F. Kennedy’s hidden role in the coup plot that resulted in the overthrow and assassination of another president, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. 

 

Ken Hughes News Feed

Ken Hughes is a master researcher of the White House tape recordings of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. His two books, Chasing Shadows and Fatal Politics, are among my favorites on the subject of Nixonian malfeasance. In our podcast conversation, he delved into why Nixon is important in the Age of Trump. “The enemies list is unfortunately all too relevant. The enemies list was one way Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the federal government against people who got in his way politically,” Hughes says.
Ken Hughes History As It Happens
In late June 1973, former White House counsel John Dean delivered startling testimony before the congressional committee investigating Watergate: Richard Nixon had an enemies list. The point, as Dean had written in a 1971 memo, was to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." The exposure of Nixon's dirty tricks led to his downfall. In 2024, Donald Trump openly campaigned to exact revenge on his enemies. Rather than alienating Republican voters, Trump's call for retribution rallied them. In this episode, historian Ken Hughes compares and contrasts the differences between then and now.
Ken Hughes History As It Happens
Hughes expressed concerns that the Trump v. United States decision “removes a host of safeguards against corruption by declaring that former presidents are broadly immune from criminal prosecution for their official acts.” To him that means “if the president breaks the law by ordering an audit of a political adversary, or anyone he was mad at that day, he might be able to pass it off as an ‘official act’ and avoid criminal prosecution.”
Ken Hughes Forbes
President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to set free people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, bring back memories of what’s considered the most controversial pardon ever: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford’s pardon of the former president in 1974 sparked outrage among politicians and the American people.
Ken Hughes Reveal
President Richard Nixon used the government as a weapon against his perceived enemies, writes Ken Hughes.
Ken Hughes
After he won, Nixon promised to end the war and achieve “peace with honor.” However, presidential historian Ken Hughes, who researched Nixon’s tape recordings, found that Nixon delayed ending U.S. involvement in the war.
Ken Hughes The Hill